Design of a Novel Task-Based Knee Rehabilitation Exoskeleton Device

This study is aimed at the design of a novel task-based knee rehabilitation device. The desired trajectories of the knee have been obtained through a vision-based motion capture system. The collected experimental kinematic data has been used as an input to a spatial mechanism synthesis procedure. Parallel mechanisms with single degree-of-freedom (DOF) have been considered to generate the complex 3D motions of the lower leg. An exact workspace synthesis approach is utilized, in which the parameterized forward kinematics equations of each serial chains of the parallel mechanisms are to be converted into implicit equations via elimination. The implicit description of the workspace is made to be a function of the structural parameters of the serial chain, making it easy to relate those parameters to the desired trajectory. The selected mechanism has been verified for the accuracy of its trajectory through CAD modeling and simulations. This design approach reduces alignment and fitting challenges in an exoskeleton as the mechanism does not require alignment of each robotic joint axis with its human counterpart.